How Good is Your Hospital?

By: Nancy | August 21, 2008 | Category: Health

A hospital is one of those things you don't really think a lot about until you need it. But there's a research tool from the government that can help you figure out now, before there's an emergency, which hospital in your region can give you the best care and the best odds of survival whether you have a planned procedure or a medical emergency.

man in hospital bed shrugging

The US Department of Health and Human Services' Hospital Compare tool lets you search for and compare the ratings of hospitals by medical procedure or health condition or simply by location. USA Today took a look at the ratings of all the hospitals listed and developed a ranking of the hospitals around the country with the best and worst survival rates for heart failure, heart attack and pneumonia.

If a planned surgery is in your future, here's a list of questions to ask your doctor about the procedure and here's a checklist to use along with the Hospital Compare site to help you talk to your doctor and your insurance company about your hospital choices.

Have a concern or complaint about your or a loved one's hospital experience? Start with the doctor or hospital staffer involved and if you don't feel the problem's been resolved, move on to the hospital's administration, your state health department or state medical board.

I don't recommend anything to you without trying it out first. So I just did a search on Hospital Compare for my area and for my mom's in New Jersey and was pleased that all of our local hospitals rated well. Whew! Take a look—how does your local hospital measure up?

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Finding Information About Illnesses and Other Ailments Online

By: Jake | December 03, 2007 | Category: Health

My brother recently did a two week stint in the hospital because he had pancreatitis. He’s fine now, but it was quite a scare.

If you are like most of the people I have talked to (that aren’t doctors or nurses), you probably have never heard of pancreatitis. When I found out my brother had it I scoured the Internet to find out everything I could about it. I found two really good websites that provided insight on the ailment and ways to prevent future cases.

MedlinePlus has information on 740 different diseases and ailments and it is where I found the Pancreatitis link above. This is no surprise since MedlinePlus is maintained by the world’s largest medical health library, the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

I found out at MedlinePlus that there are two forms of pancreatitis, acute and chronic, and it can be triggered by alcoholism and diabetes. My brother had acute pancreatitis and his doctors said his pancreatitis was caused by diabetes, which he was unaware he had.

I know a lot about diabetes since I read Sam’s recent blog post. Still I was able to find more information about diabetes using HealthFinder.gov, a partnership of many federal agencies maintained by the Department of Health and Human Services. HealthFinder.gov focuses more on prevention than MedlinePlus and links to carefully selected information and Web sites from over 1,500 health-related organizations.

While the internet is not the only way to find health information, these two sites can cover a lot of ground for you. And as always the best health expert is your doctor.

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